So YouTube hits 100 million videos a day. And surely, any day now, they'll be slapping ads all over the place and cashing up big-time. Well, not so fast. As Ars Technica points out, the DMCA provides YouTube with a defence against copyright complaints, so long as it styles itself as "a service provider" - nothing to do with us, we're just hosting some stuff for people - but that status would be removed if it was seen to be directly deriving revenue from clips it doesn't own or have rights to.
It may have won all the mindshare a one-year-old start-up could desire, but the way forward for YouTube is still not entirely clear. In its favour is the fact that very few people really want it to go away.
On the other hand, an earlier Ars Technica story noted the Recording Industry Association of America's idiotic attempt to get nasty over copyright infringement in "video karaoke" clips on YouTube. Oh Yes. Because 12 year old girls miming to Christina Aguilera songs in their bedrooms are killing the music industry. I'm sorry, but for fuck's sake …
Has Deborah Coddington lost the ability to write English? That would be a not unreasonable conclusion in the basis of her column claiming that Judith Collins is a candidate for the national leadership because she is currently "the only one in the National caucus with big kahunas." Was there not a sub-editor who could guess what Debs was desperately trying to say there? But fnaar, fnaar anyway …
And is Rosemary McLeod having a homosexual panic? Che discusses.
Amid it all, Christopher Hitchens (hat tip: Hitchens Watch) declines to follow the script in an interesting radio interview about the Middle East with celebrity winger Hugh Hewitt, and LGF Watch detects strange days in the right-wing blogosphere.
Lots of people are loving The Daily Show's coverage of the "Net neutrality" debate. And Lewis Black, also on the Daily Show, is pretty funny. And , finally, for fans of House, there's an unsubtle parody.
This just in: Tim Selwyn sentenced to two months' jail on his sedition charge. He has also been convicted of fraud charges including using false identities and stealing $11,000 in Work and Income benefits. Ouch.
UPDATE: Bomber's post at Tumeke says Selwyn got a total 17 months jail - with the historic fraud offences making up the bulk of the sentence. The bringing of the sedition charge leaves a nasty taste in my mouth, but I guess civil disobedience is best undertaken from the moral high ground, and having undertaking extensive fraud, including obtaining IRD numbers in the name of dead people, Tim didn't have that.